What is it? A music application that autonomously generates sound, rhythm and chord progressions to accompany any a cappella drivel that you spout into the mic on your PC, conjuring little song-like creations that you don't need to play a single instrument on.

Who uses it? People On The Internet. Microsoft envisions Songsmith as a work-in-progress sketchpad for musicians. In reality, however, the inflexible software has mainly been used by people to make amusing/annoying remixes of chart hits, although unlike previous user-generated song memes, like mash-ups, the joke seems to be on the technology itself, rather than the songs.

How does it work? You select a genre (examples include "California soft rock" or "dance pop") and a tempo, and then record your vocal to a guide beat. Once you're done, Songsmith extrapolates a key from your vocal and creates a set of chord progressions around it, which can then be edited later if you see fit.

Where does it come from? A small Microsoft research team, headed by Dan Morris and Sumit Basu, spent the summer of 2007 developing an academic audio research project called MySong, which was launched commercially in 2009 as Songsmith.

Why is it classic? It isn't classic, but a lot of people seem to be misinterpreting what the software is. Songsmith won't help anyone become a great composer any more than Paint made anyone into a great artist. But, if you need to knock out a quick song to go with a slideshow, or perhaps something funny or cute to email to a friend, then Songsmith is a pretty distinctive and fun tool. And you have to love a music application that lets you control the mood of your piece via two big sliders marked "HAPPY" and "JAZZY".

Songsmith isn't the first piece of software attempting to autonomously generate music – electronic pioneers like Autechre have been creating complex generative software to aid the production of their dense, mathematical soundscapes for years. But don't expect anything similarly mindblowing from Songsmith. The progressions are based on highly generic arrangements, and are often referred to as "reverse karaoke".

The way Songsmith has been so quickly, cruelly and hugely dismissed could be down to Microsoft's ability to balls up even the most viral-friendly advertising campaign with their trademark cringe factor. The original promotional video, starring creators Morris and Basu, seems to be aiming at some sort of postmodern Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog-type thing, but just ends up looking like something the contestants on The Apprentice would have made. There is, of course, an inevitable donk parody of this.

An individual known as azz100p pioneered the Songsmith mash-ups (seen by some as a two-fingered ironic inversion of Microsoft's original purpose for the app). The Police steel drums effort is OK, I guess.

According to some experts, the "holy grail" of audio software research is to create an application that can translate your a cappella vocal into a note sequence, or musical score, that can then be manipulated. Morris and Basu had a go at this, but ran into "significant difficulty". Instead, their algorithm just calculates the dozen or so things that, say, a rock guitar might do in A minor, and picks what it thinks is the most appropriate for your voice.